Sunday, November 20, 2005

Henry IV and the Redd Family

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In Henry IV, the King has some serious doubts about his son Hal. Hal's got game, he's a leading NBA scorer after all, but he's also got attitude, hanging out with Falstaff, who attempts to involve Hal in a highway robbery among other crimes and debaucheries. So when war comes, and Hal returns to the castle, and finds his father napping, and takes up his crown to contemplate the meaning it has for him, and Henry IV wakes up and sees him holding it, you can understand the father's suspicions:

Actually it isn't Hal who's got game, but Michael Redd, a star player for the Milwaukee Bucks, who leads the team in scoring at 23 points per game, 11th highest in the league. Michael's father is a minister in Columbus Ohio who, in raising Michael, took some precautionary steps that Henry IV perhaps regrets not considering:

Hen: "For now a time is come to mock at formHarry the Fifth is crowned. Up, vanity!Down, royal state! All you sage counselors, hence!"

The Redd family has managed its transmission across the generations better than Henry's. James Redd delivers his sermons at the Philadelphia Deliverance Church of Christ in Columbus, Ohio. The church is brand new, and a tribute not only to religious faith but in this case to the love that can exist between a father and a son. Since his son Michael paid for it. Here's Michael Redd in his own words:

"That was the first thing in my heart.The Lord, he gave me life. What I didwas to give it right back to Him. That'sthe least I could do, is buy a church.The very least I could do."

Meanwhile, back in England, Henry's son Hal, influenced by the Redd family or at least by the enduring spirit which informs it, is able to persuade his father that he intended no usurpation, and seeks his father's valued blessing in the normal course of human events:

Hal: "Coming to look on you, thinking you dead,And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,I spake unto this crown as having sense,And thus upbraided it: "The care on thee dependingHath fed upon the body of my father;Therefore, thou best of gold art worst of gold…".………….."If any rebel or vain spirit of mineDid with the least affection of a welcomeGive entertainment to the might of it,Let God forever keep it from my headAnd make me as the poorest vassal isThat doth with awe and terror kneel to it."

The passing of manhood between fathers and sons is a delicate thing, and like winning in football, for the two men involved it can be - underneath everything else in their lives - the only thing. As with fathers and sons so too with the passing of rule between kings, or the transfer of governments following elections, or even the passing of the mysterious Blessing from G-d to Abraham and along the line of the patriarchs; in all these cases, authority descends, it is not grasped from thin air. In the end Henry IV too understands:

Hen: "….O my son,God put it in thy mind to take it hence,That thou mightst win the more thy father's love,Pleading so wisely in excuse of it!Come hither, Harry, sit thou by my bed,And hear, I think, the very latest counselThat ever I shall breathe…".